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The New Kid on the Block
The New Kid on the Block is the fourth Living Books game based on the 1984 book written by Jack Prelutsky, and was released in 1993. Instead of just one story, it was a collection of 17 poems. It is hosted by Jack Prelutsky as he voiced the cartoon counterpart of himself. Poems *1 *2 *3 *4 *5 *6 *7 *8 *9 *10 *11 *12 *13 *14 *15 *16 *17 Titles *When Tillie ate the Chili (5) page 88 *My Baby Brother (1) page 61 *The New Kid on the Block (4) page 7 *My Dog, He Is an Ugly Dog (6) page 62 *My Brother's Head Should Be Replaced (1) page 101 *When Dracula Went to the Blood Bank (1) page 114 *40 Performing Bananas (4) page 147 *Its Fangs Were Red (2) page 22 *Mabel, Remarkable Mabel (4) page 21 *I Spied My Shadow Slinking (2) page 72 *I've Got an Incredible Headache (4) page 46 *I Am Falling Off a Mountain (5) page 149 *Homework! Oh, Homework! (6) page 54 *The Diatonic Dittymunch (4) page 132 *Ounce & Bounce (2) page 47 *My Sister is a Sissy (4) page 138 *The Bloders Are Exploding (3) page 37 *Alligators Are Unfriendly (sung by Jack Prelutsky) page 14 Characters * Jack Prelutsky * Tillie Buttons *'Read to Me' button: The poem is read to the user. *'Let Me Play' button: Takes the user to the poem and allows interaction after each stanza is read. Trivia *The original book contains over 100+ poems, but this adaptation compressed that due to disk space and also time constraints. **This adaption actually has a total of 18 poems, therefore the free storybook it came with had 18 selected poems, including "Alligators Are Unfriendly", which was actually included all the way at the end of the book. In the game, there were actually 17 poems in the story, and the poem "Alligators Are Unfriendly" was treated as a song that Jack Prelutsky sung on the main menu screen. *This is one of only two games in the series (the other being Dr. Seuss' ABC) where the text is interactive. However, unlike Dr. Seuss's ABC, the interaction that happens in the picture is very minimal, and the text plays almost all part in it here. *The "Read to Me" function is done differently here than in the other games - instead of just reading every poem from start to finish of the entire book, it reads one poem through, then stops to give you the option of reading it again or proceeding to the next. **When you play the game in the ScummVM emulator, there is a glitch with "Read to Me" mode that causes clicking on "Read Again" (the left button) to drag you over to the previous poem. *This is the first Living Books game for several things: **The first Living Book to use smoother illustrations instead of pixelated line art. **The first Living Book to have a different menu system, such as placing the page selection thing on the main menu (due to it being a collection of poems) and placing the "Credits" and "Previews" buttons on the Quit page. ***The menu system-revamping thing will happen again in D.W. the Picky Eater, but completely different from any other Living Books game. **The first Living Book to not include any language options other than English. This is possibly because of either disk space, Jack Prelutsky's works never had foreign-language versions, or the producers couldn't figure out a way to keep the rhyming flow of the poems intact. **The first and only Living Books game to not feature any running gags (not counting V1 of Just Grandma and Me). **The first Living Book to not introduce any new credits animations, with the entire credits sequence in turn reusing the Programmer and Music animations from the first two games. **The first Living Book whose preview wasn't made for the first three games. Since this game here is just a collection of poems and wouldn't be worthing making a preview for, The Tortoise and the Hare instead contains previews for Ruff's Bone, Arthur's Birthday and Harry and the Haunted House. *You leave the book when Jack says, "All right! Good-bye." (if "Yes" is chosen), but you might want to keep playing when he says "Okay" (if "No" is chosen). This is also the last Living Book to include two generic kids as "No" or "Yes" answers. *The demo version of this game uses the poem "I Spied My Shadow Slinking." *Since this Living Book is a collection of poems, there is no "The End" screen, like Stellaluna, The Cat in the Hat and D.W. the Picky Eater. *The left arrow says "Read Again" and the right arrow says "Next Poem." * "She wheezed, she sputtered" was heard in high quality. ** The wheezing and sputtering sound effects were heard in low and high quality as well. * Like The Tortoise and the Hare, the V1.0 version of the game includes the same preview for Ruff's Bone, as well as the two previews for Arthur's Birthday, and ''Harry and the Haunted House'' (the latter two which are only accessible if you drag all the game files onto the Desktop and edit the outline file). It is the last game in the series to include previews for any upcoming Living Books games. ** Once again, towards the end of the Ruff's Bone preview for V1.1, a line was changed from "Then get Broderbund's Living Book called Ruff's Bone!" to "Then get Living Books called Ruff's Bone!" due to the Living Books series turning into a joint venture with Random House. * Like the first two games, this one originally had a slow fading engine in V1.0. ** V1.1 gave the game an electric engine upgrade; the fading is faster on the Windows version, there is a loading cursor into the form of a running man. * When running this game on the ScummVM emulator, there is a glitch on the Quit page that causes the Credits and Previews buttons to not work when you click on them. * This, The Tortoise and the Hare, Just Grandma and Me, and Harry and the Haunted House were featured in a Czech magazine advertisement for Living Books. However, none of the Living Books games have been released in the Czech Republic. Voice Talent *Narrator - Jack Prelutsky *Poems read by: Don Albrecht, Sheila Gordon, Natalie Beyl-Leahy, Sara Ludlow, Spoonman, Aaron Schlicting, Jane Scolieri Category:Living Books Games Category:Books Category:Jack Prelutsky